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26240.599949
There are two main strands of arguments regarding the value-free ideal (VFI): desirability and achievability (Reiss and Sprenger 2020). In this essay, I will argue for what I will call a compatibilist account of upholding the VFI focusing on its desirability even if the VFI is unachievable. First, I will explain what the VFI is. Second, I will show that striving to uphold the VFI (desirability) is compatible with the rejection of its achievability. Third, I will demonstrate that the main arguments against the VFI do not refute its desirability. Finally, I will provide arguments on why it is desirable to strive to uphold the VFI even if the VFI is unachievable and show what role it can play in scientific inquiry. There is no single definition of the VFI, yet the most common way to interpret it is that non-epistemic values ought not to influence scientific reasoning (Brown 2024, 2). Non-epistemic values are understood as certain ethical, social, cultural or political considerations. Therefore, it is the role of epistemic values, such as accuracy, consistency, empirical adequacy and simplicity, to be part of and to ensure proper scientific reasoning.
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26257.600189
There is an overwhelmingly abundance of works in AI Ethics. This growth is chaotic because of how sudden it is, its volume, and its multidisciplinary nature. This makes difficult to keep track of debates, and to systematically characterize goals, research questions, methods, and expertise required by AI ethicists. In this article, I show that the relation between ‘AI’ and ‘ethics’ can be characterized in at least three ways, which correspond to three well-represented kinds of AI ethics: ethics and AI; ethics in AI; ethics of AI. I elucidate the features of these three kinds of AI Ethics, characterize their research questions, and identify the kind of expertise that each kind needs. I also show how certain criticisms to AI ethics are misplaced, as being done from the point of view of one kind of AI ethics, to another kind with different goals. All in all, this work sheds light on the nature of AI ethics, and set the grounds for more informed discussions about scope, methods, and trainings of AI ethicists.
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54650.600216
Critical theory arose as a response to perceived inadequacies in
Marxist theory, and perceived changes in modern capitalism. Critical
theorists emphasized the ability of capitalism to shape the thought
and experience of individuals: it distorts how modern society and its
products appear to us, and how we think about them. So, aesthetic
experience – like all other experience – is moulded to and
compromised by capitalism. For critical theory, if we seek to
understand aesthetics we need to acknowledge this distorting
effect. Critical theorists ask us to pay attention to how art, and aesthetic
experience, suffer under capitalism, and become part of the way in
which capitalism prevents the formation of a better life.
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112336.600228
Dehumanization is widely thought to occur when someone is treated or
regarded as less than human. However, there is an ongoing debate about
how to develop this basic characterization. Proponents of the
harms-based approach focus on the idea that to dehumanize someone
is to treat them in a way that harms their humanity; whereas
proponents of the psychological approach focus on the idea
that to dehumanize someone is to think of them as less than
human. Other theorists adopt a pluralistic view that combines elements
of both approaches. In addition to explaining different views on what it means to
dehumanize someone, this article focuses on related issues, such as
how to resolve the so-called “paradox of dehumanization”;
the causes and consequences of dehumanization; the sorts of contexts
in which dehumanization typically occurs; and the relation between
dehumanization and objectification.
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127855.600236
Robert W. Batterman’s A Middle Way: A Non-Fundamental Approach to Many-Body Physics is an extraordinarily insightful book, far-reaching in its scope and significance, interdisciplinary in character due to connections made between physics, materials science and engineering, and biology, and groundbreaking in the sense that it reflects on important scientific domains that are mostly absent from current literature. The book presents a hydrodynamic methodology, which Batterman explains is pervasive in science, for studying many-body systems as diverse as gases, fluids, and composite materials like wood, steel, and bone. Following Batterman, I will call said methodology the middle-out strategy. Batterman’s main thesis is that the middle-out strategy is superior to alternatives, solves an important autonomy problem, and, consequently, implies that certain mesoscale structures (explained below) ought to be considered natural kinds. In what follows, I unpack and flesh out these claims, starting with a discussion of the levels of reality and its representation. Afterward, I briefly outline the contents of the book’s chapters and then identify issues that seem to me to merit further clarification.
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222639.600251
Political disagreement tends to display a “radical” nature that is partly related to the fact that political beliefs and judgments are generally firmly held. This makes people unlikely to revise and compromise on them. …
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487724.600261
QBism explicitly takes the subjective view: probabilities of events are defined solely by past experiences, i.e. the record of observations. As shown by the authors (Fuchs et al, 2013), this: “... removes the paradoxes, conundra, and pseudo-problems that have plagued quantum foundations for the past nine decades”. It is criticised for its lack of ontology and anthropocentric nature. However, if Everett's (1957) formulation is taken at face value, exactly the features of QBism are the result, and the ontology is inherent. The anthropocentric nature of the solution is simply an indication that the quantum state is relative, as is central to Everett. Problems of measurement and locality do not arise.
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487742.60027
In Part 1 the properties of QBism are shown to be natural consequences of taking quantum mechanics at face value, as does Everett in his Relative State Formulation (1957). In Part 2 supporting evidence is presented. Parmenides' (Palmer, 2012) notion that the physical world is static and unchanging is vividly confirmed in the new physics. This means the time evolution of the physical world perceived by observers only occurs at the level of appearances as noted by Davies (2002). In order to generate this appearance of time evolution, a moving frame of reference is required: this is the only possible explanation of the enactment of the dynamics of physics in a static universe.
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487758.600279
Despite the simplicity of Weyl's solution to the paradox of the passage of time in the static block universe, virtually no interest is shown in this approach although as shown in Part 2, the problem of the Now could be taken as evidence for his solution being correct. A moving frame of reference is required to explain the experience of the enactment of any of the dynamics of physics, and the experiencing consciousness supervenes on this phenomenon. Given the logic involved is straightforward, it seems that the reasons all this has been ignored may be less so. Here it is suggested, based on Davies' (2006) research, that this might well involve a horror of even the possibility of deity and mysticism being dignified by discussion, let alone endorsement. The objective here is to demonstrate that this approach does validate certain archetypal myths of the great spiritual traditions, but at the same time fully supports and reinforces the objective basis of the science of physics. The myths are exploded to reveal simply scientific principles, and a complete absence of gods or mystical phenomena, indeed such things are categorically ruled out. The scientific principles illustrated by the third logical type which have languished unexamined turn out to be powerful knowledge which serves only to reinforce and emphasise how deeply flawed were the key principles of the religious preoccupations which our culture had to relinquish in order to move forward.
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487777.600288
The localization problem in relativistic quantum theory has persisted for more than seven decades, yet it is largely unknown and continues to perplex even those well-versed in the subject. At the heart of this problem lies a fundamental conflict between localizability and relativistic causality, which can also be construed as part of the broader dichotomy between measurement and unitary dynamics. This article provides a historical review of the localization problem in one-particle relativistic quantum mechanics, clarifying some persistent misconceptions in the literature, and underscoring the antinomy between causal dynamics and localized observables.
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487795.600304
— While emergentism enjoys some good fortune in contemporary philosophy, attempts at elucidating the history of this view are rare. Among such attempts, by far the most influential certainly is McLaughlin’s landmark paper “The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism” (1992). While McLaughlin’s analysis of the recent history of emergentism is insightful and instructive in its own ways, in the present paper we offer reasons to be suspicious of some of its central claims. In particular, we advance evidence that rebuts McLaughlin’s contention that British Emergentism did not fall in the 1920–1930s because of philosophical criticism but rather because of an alleged empirical inconsistency with fledgling quantum mechanics.
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516756.600316
Comparative philosophy of religion is a subfield of both philosophy of
religion and comparative philosophy. Philosophy of religion engages
with philosophical questions related to religious belief and practice,
including questions concerning the concept of religion itself. Comparative philosophy compares concepts, theories, and arguments from
diverse philosophical traditions. The term “comparative
philosophy of religion” can refer to the comparative
philosophical study of different religions or of different
philosophies of religion. It can thus be either a first-order
philosophical discipline—investigating matters to do with
religion—or a second-order philosophical discipline,
investigating matters to do with philosophical inquiry into religion.
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527901.600325
High speed store required: 947 words. No of bits in a word: 64 Is the program overlaid? No No. of magnetic tapes required: None What other peripherals are used? Card Reader; Line Printer No. of cards in combined program and test deck: 112 Card punching code: EBCDIC Keywords: Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Rotation Matrix, Rotation Group, Representation, Euler Angle, Symmetry, Helicity, Correlation.
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606049.600333
A neglected but challenging argument developed by Peter Geach, John Haldane, and Stephen Rothman purports to show that reproduction cannot be explained by natural selection and is irreducibly teleological. Meanwhile, the most plausible definitions of life include reproduction as a constitutive feature. The implication of combining these ideas is that life cannot be explained by natural selection and is irreducibly teleological. This does not entail that life cannot be explained in evolutionary terms of some kind, but it does lend support to the controversial view of Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel that evolutionists need to look beyond the constraints of Neo-Darwinism.
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638256.600342
Where does the Born Rule come from? We ask: “What is the simplest extension of probability theory where the Born rule appears”? This is answered by introducing “superposition events” in addition to the usual discrete events. Two-dimensional matrices (e.g., incidence matrices and density matrices) are needed to mathematically represent the differences between the two types of events. Then it is shown that those incidence and density matrices for superposition events are the (outer) products of a vector and its transpose whose components foreshadow the “amplitudes” of quantum mechanics. The squares of the components of those “amplitude” vectors yield the probabilities of the outcomes. That is how probability amplitudes and the Born Rule arise in the minimal extension of probability theory to include superposition events. This naturally extends to the full Born Rule in the Hilbert spaces over the complex numbers of quantum mechanics. It would perhaps be satisfying if probability amplitudes and the Born Rule only arose as the result of deep results in quantum mechanics (e.g., Gleason’s Theorem). But both arise in a simple extension of probability theory to include “superposition events”–which should not be too surprising since superposition is the key non-classical concept in quantum mechanics.
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689812.600351
Edith Landmann-Kalischer (1877–1951) is the author of several
significant studies on topics in the philosophy of art, aesthetics,
value, mind, and knowledge in the first half of the twentieth century. Influenced by Franz Brentano, Georg Simmel, Carl Stumpf, and Stefan
George, her studies were initiated at a time when the academic, often
tendentious borders between psychology and philosophy, like those
between aesthetics and art history, were still being drawn. While
clearly also influenced by Edmund Husserl, she takes his phenomenology
to task for its idealism and, in her view, its unfounded isolation
from the sciences, especially psychology.
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762936.600359
I've been exploring in this newsletter recently how people's growing inability to understand and control the institutions that shape their lives affects their political views (see here or here for instance). …
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947970.600368
Brian Leftow’s 2022 book, Anselm’s Argument: Divine Necessity is an impressively thorough discussion of Anselmian modal metaphysics, centred around what he takes to be Anselm’s strongest “argument from perfection” (Leftow’s preferred term for an Ontological Argument). This is not the famous argument from Proslogion 2, nor even the modal argument that some have claimed to find in Proslogion 3, but rather, an argument from Anselm’s Reply to Gaunilo, expressed in the following quotation: “If … something than which no greater can be thought … existed, neither actually nor in the mind could it not exist. Otherwise it would not be something than which no greater can be thought. But whatever can be thought to exist and does not exist, if it existed, would be able actually or in the mind not to exist. For this reason, if it can be thought, it cannot not exist.” (p. 66) Before turning to this argument, Leftow offers an extended and closely-argued case for understanding Anselm’s modality in terms of absolute necessity and possibility, with a metaphysical foundation on powers as argued for at length (575 pages) in his 2012 book God and Necessity. After presenting this interpretation in Chapter 1, Leftow’s second chapter discusses various theological applications (such as the fixity of the past, God’s veracity, and immortality), addressing them in a way that both expounds and defends what he takes to be Anselm’s approach. Then in Chapter 3 Leftow addresses certain problems, for both his philosophical and interpretative claims, while Chapter 4 spells out the key Anselmian argument, together with Leftow’s suggested improvements. Chapter 5 explains how the argument depends on Brouwer’s system of modal logic, and defends this while also endorsing the more standard and comprehensive system S5.
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949138.600376
In a recent TLS, I wrote about the spoils of pessimism—whether we should be quietists, retreating from the world, or activists who fight for it—but my real subject was despair. I did not get to write about the best book on despair I’ve read: Christian Wiman’s prose-poetic Zero at the Bone. …
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1060392.600385
Let us say that a being is omnisubjective if it has a perfect first-person grasp of all subjective states (including belief states). The question of whether God is omnisubjective raises a nest of thorny issues in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, at least if there are irreducibly subjective states. There are notorious difficulties analyzing the core traditional divine attributes—omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence—but those difficulties are notorious partly because we seem to have a decent pre-theoretic grasp of what it means for something to be all knowing, powerful, and good, and so it is surprising, frustrating, and perplexing that it is so difficult to provide a satisfactory analysis of those notions.
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1064292.600393
The theoretical developments that led to supersymmetry – first global and then local – over a period of about six years (1970/71-1976) emerged from a confluence of physical insights and mathematical methods drawn from diverse, and sometimes independent, research directions. Despite these varied origins, a common thread united them all: the pursuit of a unity in physics, grounded in the central role of symmetry, where “symmetry” is understood in terms of group theory, representation theory, algebra, and differential geometry.
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1127225.600402
Scientists do not merely choose to accept fully formed theories, they also have to decide which models to work on before they are fully developed and tested. Since decisive empirical evidence in favour of a model will not yet have been gathered, other criteria must play determining roles. I examine the case of modern high-energy physics where the experimental context that once favoured the pursuit of beautiful, simple, and general theories now favours the pursuit of models that are ad hoc, narrow in scope, and complex; in short, ugly models. The lack of new discoveries since the Higgs boson, together with the unlikeliness of a new higher energy collider, has left searches for new physics conceptually and empirically wide open. Physicists must make use of the experiment at hand while also creatively exploring alternatives that have not yet been explored. This encourages the pursuit of models that have at least one of two key features: i) they take radically novel approaches, or ii) are easily testable. I present three models, neutralino dark matter, the relaxion, and repulsive gravity, and show that even if they do exhibit traditional epistemic virtues, they are nonetheless pursuitworthy. I argue that experimental context strongly determines pursuitworthiness and I lay out the conditions under which experiment encourages the pursuit of ugly models.
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1151216.600411
[Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Juliana
Bidadanure and David Axelsen replaces the
former entry
on this topic by the previous author.]
Egalitarianism is a school of thought in contemporary political
philosophy that treats equality as the chief value of a just political
system. Simply put, egalitarians argue for equality. They
have a presumption in favor of social arrangements that advance
equality, and they treat deviations from equality as prima
facie suspect. They recommend a far greater degree of equality
than we currently have, and they do so for distinctly egalitarian
reasons.
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1237380.600419
trices. The main aim is to construct a system of Nmatrices by substituting standard sets by quasets. Since QST is a conservative extension of ZFA (the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with Atoms), it is possible to obtain generalized Nmatrices (Q-Nmatrices). Since the original formulation of QST is not completely adequate for the developments we advance here, some possible amendments to the theory are also considered. One of the most interesting traits of such an extension is the existence of complementary quasets which admit elements with undetermined membership. Such elements can be interpreted as quantum systems in superposed states. We also present a relationship of QST with the theory of Rough Sets RST, which grants the existence of models for QST formed by rough sets. Some consequences of the given formalism for the relation of logical consequence are also analysed.
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1525693.600443
Following the lead of heterogeneous and invariably brilliant thinkers as Thucydides, Arnold J. Toynbee, Winston Churchill, Carl Sagan, Philip K. Dick, and Niall Ferguson, I consider a virtual history – or an alternative Everettian branch of the universal wavefunction – in which the ancient materialism and atomism of Epicurus (and heliocentrism of Aristarchus, for good measure) have prevailed over the (Neo) Platonist-Aristotelian religious-military complex. Such a historical swerve (pun fully intended) would have removed the unhealthy obsession with mind-body dualism and dialectics, which crippled much of the European thought throughout the last millennium. It is at least open to serious questioning whether quasireligious totalitarian ideologies could have arisen and brought about so much death, suffering and pain in this virtual history as they did in our actual history.
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1525712.600453
There’s a certain mindset that some people have when they think about fundamental physics and the world of middle-sized dry goods. The mindset is that the middle-sized stuff is somehow “less real” than the stuff that physics describes — elementary particles, quantum fields, etc. There are quite a few philosophers, and some scientists, who hold this view with great conviction, and whose research is driven by a desire to validate it. There are other people who have a completely different attitude about reductionism: they see it as the enemy of the good and beautiful, and as a force to be stopped. The worries of the anti-reductionists do seem to be well-motivated. If, for example, your wife is nothing more than some quantum fields in a certain state, then why vouchsafe her your eternal and undying love? More generally, is the existence of trees, horses, or our own children nothing more than a convenient fiction that biology or religion has tricked us into believing? If physics shows that these things are not fully real, how should we then live?
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1525752.600462
The Hard Problem of consciousness—explaining why and how physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience—remains one of the most challenging puzzles in modern thought. Rather than attempting to resolve this issue outright, in this paper I explore whether empirical science can be broadened to incorporate consciousness as a fundamental degree of freedom. Drawing on Russellian monism and revisiting the historical “relegation problem” (the systematic sidelining of consciousness by the scientific revolution), I propose an extension of quantum mechanics by augmenting the Hilbert space with a “consciousness dimension.” This framework provides a basis for reinterpreting psi phenomena (e.g., telepathy, precognition) as natural outcomes of quantum nonlocality and suggests that advanced non– human intelligence (NHI) technology might interface with a quantum–conscious substrate.
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1554990.600473
The Aristotelian corpus (corpus aristotelicum) is the
collection of the extant works transmitted under the name of Aristotle
along with its organizational features, such as its ordering, internal
textual divisions (into books and chapters) and titles. It has evolved
over time: Aristotelian treatises have sometimes been lost and
sometimes recovered, “spurious” works now regarded as
inauthentic have joined the collection while scribes and scholars were
attempting to organize its massive amount of text in various ways. The
texts it includes are highly technical treatises that were not
originally intended for publication and first circulated within
Aristotle’s philosophical circle only, Aristotle distinguishes
them from his “exoteric” works (Pol.
1278b30; EE 1217b22,
1218b34) which were meant for a wider audience.
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1555004.600482
The uses of the word “ideology” are so divergent as to
make it doubtful that there is any conceptual unity to the term. It
may refer to a comprehensive worldview, a legitimating discourse, a
partisan political doctrine, culture, false beliefs that help support
illegitimate power, beliefs that reinforce group identity, or
mystification. It is often used pejoratively, but just as often it is
a purely descriptive term. When authors criticize ideology, they may
be criticizing complicity with injustice, confirmation bias,
illusions, self-serving justifications, or dogmatism. When authors
identify ideology, they may locate it in forms of consciousness,
propositional attitudes, culture, institutions, discourses, social
conventions, or material rituals.
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1606775.60049
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